Review of 'Nowhere Peoplee' by Manoranjan Byapari
Mohan Gulrajani
‘Nowhere People’: Manoranjan Byapari’s novel ‘sees’ the nameless poor on India’s railway stations
The novel returns again and again to hunger, not just for food, but hunger as a symptom of class and caste.
Author Manoranjan Byapari
I take trains often, and like most people, I always get busy when trying to get my train. The people sleeping by the tracks, the vendors, and the children weaving through the station simply become the background of everyday travel. We hem, but we don’t notice them.
Manoranjan Byapari’s latest novel, Nowhere People, forces us to change this. Set around the Jadavpur railway station in Kolkata, the novel brings to life the story of those who live their entire lives on the platform – nameless, faceless men and women who work for the city, yet are never truly part of it. Platform number two becomes their home, their shelter, and their only space in a world that tries to erase them. Byapari’s prose pulls you into their lives and into the strange in-between that defines the railway station, a place that is neither here nor there, neither fully of the city nor outside it.
A world of its own
The station is a world of its own. The more polished, “civilised” platform one, bustling with wealthier commuters and a more global sensibility, is a stark contrast to platform two, the home of local labourers, migrants, and the “nowhere people”. The divide is not just physical; it is social, economic, and moral. “The fine men and women”, Byapari tells us, “Had an unspoken rule: keep the poor hungry so the better off may always win.”
Though many characters are unnamed, they feel real. Those who are named – Joga, Horen Gosh, Ganjatti Gobindo, and Number Ten – carry their entire histories in their names. Horen Gosh, for instance, is a man whom Partition “robbed of everything except his language.” Others have forgotten their original names entirely, renamed and reidentified by the rickshaw community. The politics of naming, and the lack of it, run deep. As Nobo ponders, what does a name matter when society does not acknowledge your existence?
The main character of this story is a young man who has just wandered into the station. At first, he is simply “someone”, called different things by different men, none of which he likes. But names, like belonging, must be earned. Taken under Joga’s wing, he is named Nobo. Nobo begins to find a place in this rough, sometimes violent, yet loyal community of rickshaw pullers. They ferry passengers across the city by day and sleep beside the same vehicles by night. They earn just enough to eat, but never enough to build a life or to dream. The men may have little, but they share what they do have.
Those who want to live
The book shows again and again the resilience of those who want to live; “people who want to live,” Byapari says, “cannot be killed off so easily.” The rickshaw pullers of platform two are bound not by blood or birthplace but by the idea of a community. “You know,” one character says, “a single stick is easily broken, but a bundle of sticks is not.” It is this community of men from different castes, religions, and regions that forms the spine of Nowhere People. Yet the novel is not only about these men; Byapari also talks about the women and children who live in this world and the struggles they go through. The appearance of the newborn baby at the station is one of the most important moments in the novel.
Byapari threads social commentary through the novel. Through his characters and settings, he brings to light important conversations about the failures of government systems, the destruction of village economies, the exploitation of labourers (migrants or otherwise), and the effects of the Partition. The novel returns again and again to hunger, not just for food, but hunger as a symptom of class and caste, a means of keeping boundaries between people firmly in place.
The translation by Anchita Ghatak is natural, unforced, and, as far as I can tell, accurate. Even when Bengali phrases appear alongside their English explanations, the flow remains undisrupted. The descriptions, the local phrases, and the humour are beautifully translated into English but retain the feeling and emotion of Bengali.
This isn’t a novel you’d read for comfort, but for the story it tells and the emotions it stirs.
Nowhere Peoplee, Manoranjan Byapari, translated from the Bengali by Anchita Ghatak, Ekada/Westland
Professor (Dr.) M. L. Gulrajani F.S.D.C. (UK)
Former Professor and Dean (I.R&D), IIT Delhi
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